


well-preserved

by Snickfic



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Drabble Sequence, F/F, Gen, Horror, Science-fiction Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25542790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: The Valkyrie did not try to die; she only made no effort to live. She expected the long term effect to be much the same.
Relationships: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie/Hela (Marvel)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 36
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	well-preserved

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madeinessos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeinessos/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this treat! I got inspired by your comment about Valkyrie being very old.
> 
> Contains: non-graphic depictions of people burning alive.

The Valkyrie did not try to die; she only made no effort to live. She expected the long term effect to be much the same.

* * *

  
Odin, odious Odin weighed the Valkyrie down with gold she and her sisters had won with blood not so long ago. She took it away, off-world, and walked shining like the sun down shadowed streets until opportunists elected to relieve her of her daylight.

They failed. She was a Valkyrie, after all, and she carried still the blade of Valkyries, the Dragonfang. She found she disliked fighting in gold, however. She left most of it with the bodies of the slain, so in a way they got what they came for, which is more than many of us can say.

* * *

  
The Valkyrie took a room above an inn on a little world with no name anyone cared to remember. For many days running she drank until she slept, with the idea—soon the only one she had—that eventually the drinking would become unnecessary and the sleep strictly metaphorical.

The exchange rate on this world was quite good; nevertheless, on the three thousand and eleventh day, she woke to find she’d run out of gold. Also she smelled like someone who’d died, possibly a number of times, and never bothered to take a bath in between.

Also, she was bored.

* * *

  
The Valkyrie took a job with three heroes in search of a dragon. This would earn her gold, cure her boredom, and/or lead her to no longer worrying about the first two problems. 

The three heroes lit up the whole valley as they died, their hair flaming merrily like torches. When they’d burned down to cinders, Valkyrie prodded one with her bare toe. She hadn’t any clothes left, nor very much hair—she hadn’t much at all except singed eyebrows, her own unblemished skin, and, of course, Dragonfang.

The cinder-hero crumbled at her touch. “Well, fuck,” the Valkyrie said.

* * *

  
The Valkyrie should have known when she watched Hela work her green mysteries on the heroic dead, her noxious mists winding around the corpses in a hue that seemed not to exist anywhere in the world except that crypt. The whole chamber stank of magic. The Valkyrie even knew what the magic was for, because Hela had told her, because she’d asked an hour before when Hela had risen from their bed.

“What good are they to me if they rot?” Hela had said.

That was when the Valkyrie should have understood: that which belonged to Hela did not decay.

* * *

  
The Valkyrie traveled worlds, took ill-advised baths in unlikely waters, ate a great many things that ought to have killed her. She stumbled into heroics now and again, for she had little patience with those who would crush her, never mind that she couldn’t be crushed. 

She drank, still. Dreamless slumber was worth something.

She fell through a funnel in the sky, landed on a planet made of trash, was presented to a weirdo in gold lamé, insulted his mother and his eyeliner. He decided to address this irritation by melting her.

“Oh, my,” he said, when he’d finished trying.

* * *

  
The universe will come to a stop one day, or so the Valkyrie hears. Even the tiniest spinning motes will someday fall still.

She’s waiting.


End file.
